I was still at the front of the group checking for traps, so I was one of the first to stumble out into the light. After days in the dark, the sun was blinding. And as a testament to the realism of Feronia, my eyes burned and watered from the sudden brightness.

The others were still making their way out, when some guy off to my right said, "Well, it's about time."

I wiped my eyes and saw a group of men sitting idly on a large flat stone. The slowly hopped off and got to their feet. There were five of them, all tall, muscular, and objectively handsome. Three of them were human, and from their clothes, there was a warrior, a mage, and a thief. Although, Feronia probably called each of these classes something else. There was also Felinoid Duelist and a species I hadn't seen before.

He was lean and sinewy with small rounded ears poking through a slick mass of black hair. If I had to guess, he was some sort of otter-man, and he was armed with a scimitar.

They were all dressed in starter clothes, and what really struck me was how much of their bodies were covered. They were dressed quite normally for a European fantasy setting: pants, jerkins, high boots. The warrior had a plate chest plate. The mage had robes that reached all the way to the ankles. Only the otter-man had his midriff bared, showing off his abs. His banded-leather armor resembled a football player's shoulder pads. But otherwise, there was nothing skimpy or lewd about their gear.

They must have noticed the same discrepancy between the appearance of their party and ours. The human warrior looked us over and said in a thick British accent, "What the hell are you lot supposed to be?"

The Felinoid snickered. "We were expecting a party of adventurers not a bunch of whores and their eunuchs.

Josh hefted his staff in his hands. "How about we see who has their balls after I smash you down with this stick I have."

Mack shook her head. "What my slow friend is trying to say is: if you go around insulting your betters be prepared to die a quick and ugly death." She drew her saber, and the other party grabbed their weapons and the mage started a casting. Their stance was less aggressive and more defensive. They must have sensed that we didn't only out number them, but also were of a higher level.

I jumped between the groups holding out my hands. "Let's everyone calm down. There's no need for player-on-player combat. Not until we know what's happening with the spawning system."

Mack said, "They were obviously waiting to ambush us, so I say we put an end to them."

"We weren't planning on ambushing you," their mage said. "You had the dungeon locked up. The system said we couldn't enter until you left."

"It true. It would have," Sulin said. "Only one party in a dungeon at a time. It goes along with the reset."

"Well, fine then. Let's get moving. I want to find a pond or something to get cleaned up in," Crystal said.

The other party looked at her and grimaced. They couldn't possible guess what caked on her hair and armor, but not knowing wouldn't make it any less disgusting.

Tanner spoke up. "Wait. I'm guessing from you're equipment, you haven't been in Feronia long. Did you start before or after the crash."

"What crash?"

"A-ha. I thought so. Are these characters the ones you deigned for the game?"

"What else would they be?" The otter-man answered.

"And a whole lot more bloody practical than ..." The warrior waved his hand at us. "Is this all a result of a bet gone wrong."

Mack said. "Oh, let's just cut down these noobs and be on our way. It'll save all of us a lot of time."

Tanner replied, "No, don't you see. They don't know there was a change. This is fascinating." Then to them, she said, "I'm guessing from you're accents you entered from England. Saturday, right? What time was it?"

"Manchester. Why what does it matter?" said one.

"We watched the match at the pub, had a few more pints, then popped over to the game-center. Must have logged in around eight," said another.

"And how long have you been in Feronia?"

The mage seemed to be getting a little fed up, but answered. "Since morning. Not long after dawn. We fought some wolves, came across this dungeon, and decided to grind our way up a few levels. But it was occupied, so we've been waiting. What's all this about?" 

Tanner squinted, clearly trying to figure something out.

Crystal said, "I'm kind of with the douche-bags on this. What does any of this matter?"

"Look," Tanner said with nervous excitement. "Each day in Feronia is supposed to be forty-eight-minutes real time. We're more than halfway through day six. So, that works out to about four-and-a-half hours." There was a general look of so? from everyone. "We all entered the pod roughly around twelve-thirty eastern time."

Yes, I remembered being annoyed about having to wait until midday, but with Mack living on the west coast it was the earliest she could get in with the game-center opening at nine and the time it takes to sign the waivers and change into the stasis suit.

"So, twelve-thirty our time is five-thirty their time. If they went in at eight and have only been here less than a day, it means there's a discrepancy."

Mack said, "And?"

"This is just a guess, but I think Katie has increased the processing speed. I day in Feronia is now closer to twenty-four-minutes. Meaning, we're going to be here for more than a year not seven months like we planned."

There was a collective groan from our group, and Mack hissed, "Son-of-a-bitch."

The other party was clearly confused by this. They looked at one another, seeing if any of their friends knew what we were talking about.

The mage said, "Cool. So it sounds like we get an extra month for our money. I thought there'd been an upgrade when I got a choice of different species and classes from the ones in the adverts."

"Who's Katie?" asked the thief.

"The AI," I said. "You know the computer construct behind those pink messages."

"Oh, is that its name? Other than the pink display, it seems regular enough."

"Just wait," I said.

"Well, ladies, gents," The warrior nodded to us, and then said with exaggerated politeness that was clearly intended to mock us in some way, "Speaking of waiting, we don't intend to keep waiting around here all day. So, if you'll excuse us, we have a dungeon to clear."

"You don't want to do that," I told him. "That was a brutally hard one, we barely made it out."

"Well, we ain't you," said otter-man.

Mack said, "My delicate little friend is right. You won't last five minutes in there." Her voice had an unnatural edge to it, making her words into a challenge instead of a warning.

The warrior strode forward toward the cave entrance and said, "If you got through it, how hard can it be."

"Whatever you do," Mack continued. "Don't follow the chalk mark on the wall. That will lead to certain death."

How could they not see she was goading them into going in. They'd get slaughtered or turned into the demented slaves of the Minotaur. I was about to tell them exactly what was in there, when warrior said, "Later losers." And several of the party gave us a two finger salute that I new from British comedy shows was the equivalent to a U.S. raised middle digit.

I grit my teeth and said nothing as they walked in.

When they were gone, I said to Mack, "You're really evil. You know that?"

"And don't forget it."

Tanner was still pondering the situation, but spoke when we started getting ready to follow a path away from the cave. "Oh, this isn't good. Don't you see? New players aren't noticing anything wrong. They could pull out during character creation but because they're not having weird character's pushed on them, they just start playing. And worse with the accelerated time, it might be weeks before anyone notices something is wrong."

"Why?" I asked. "Won't someone see that there's strange things happening. I don't know about you, but bosses with the specila power eo masturbation is pretty noticeable."

"No," Mack said sounding a little horrified. "Tanner's right. Not only is Feronia huge, but the company also runs two other fully immersive games, and a dozen regular virtual ones. They'll probably only have basic customer support in on the weekends. And they'll mainly be there in case the game-centers have problems. There probably won't be much monitoring other than user's vitals and general game stats. Even when they have a full staff compliment, because of the sped up time, it might be hard to notice anything unless they send a monitor into the game as a player." She didn't work for a game company but she new the industry well enough.

Rick said, "But what about people leaving. I mean both of our groups scheduled our stays from weekend to weekend. There must be lots of turn around."

"True. True," said Tanner, pacing. "But it will depend on what they report and how serious the game-centers take it. It also assumes nothing has gone wrong with the pods themselves."

Crystal said, "No point in dwelling on that. There's nothing we can do about it anyway."

I could tell the topic of our bodies being screwed up by the crash really bothered her. Hell, it bothered me too.

I said, "There's nothing we can do about it, so we best keep moving. The days nearly done, and we should find a good place to camp."

* * *

The dungeon had kicked us out in the foothills of some rather impressive mountains. Strips of pine forest wove between rocky outcroppings. And the high peaks in the distance turned purple with the setting of the sun.

We'd followed a rough trail through the wooded areas until we came across a brook that was wide and deep enough for Crystal to wash in. After what she'd been through, we all agreed to give her her privacy. But she'd been gone a long time.

"How long does it take to have a bath?" Mack asked.

Tanner said, "If it had been you how long would it take before you felt clean again?"

"Touché," she said.

Rick stood up and gazed out at our surroundings. "Still, we should get somewhere less open before dark."

Crystal finally showed up and from the look of smouldering anger on her face, no one felt it was a good idea to complain to her, and we set off without a word.

We'd walked for another hour without coming across any suitable place to camp, when we met a woman sitting by a stairway carved into a large stone hill. She was draped in a dark brown cloak, and we almost missed her in the dwindling light.

She held out her hand to us. "Alms for the poor."

I looked expectantly at Mack, who was carrying most of our money. She didn't look too happy about this development, but she'd played enough games to know you don't piss-off beggar women in the wilderness. They were bound to turn into a powerful sorceress or a dragon or something, if you insulted them.

She placed a silver coin in her hand. It quickly vanished beneath the cloak, and she gave a bow of thanks.

"Excuse me," I said. "You wouldn't know of a safe place to camp for the night?"

"The temple," she said. "Nothing will bother you there."

"What temple? How do we get to it?"

She held out her hand again. Mack threw me a murderous glance, but gave her another silver coin.

"The Temple of Nymphara. For a sacrifice, she bestows many blessings. Just follow these stairs to the end. Hard to miss."

"What kind of sacrifice?"

She required another coin to answer. Once she was paid, she said, "Just a single drop of blood to show your devotion. But be careful of ..." She paused to cough and never finished her sentence.

"Be careful of what?"

Her hand raised out again. I thought Mack might use her sword to cut it off, but she slapped another coin into it, hard enough to make a sound. But the old woman didn't seem to mind.

"There's a false temple on the way. You do not want to make a mistake and show your devotion there. That would be ... very bad."

Mack said, "Lets start up those stairs. If this conversation continues much longer it'll be us sitting here begging for money."

The stone stairs went straight up then curved to the right before disappearing around the slope of the hill. We hadn't climbed very far, when I heard the old woman chuckle and say, "Noobs! They're so easy to get money from." When I looked back, she was gone.